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That’s when I learn a very powerful lesson: to survive, you can pretend, you can lie, and you can swallow back the blood until you find an opportunity for attack.
Guess I was born ruined, but now I’m dressed in sin. It’s an outfit I wear like a designer dress, as proud of it as a red-carpet gown, something to show off. It’s in my blood, that awful, awful blood that I share with Cat.
To some people, children are gifts of the heart, a piece of their soul that they find great joy in imparting happiness and love to. For others, they are pawns and property, meant to be moved around the game of life with the soul intent to crush and kill.
Because that’s how you survive against all the odds: you pretend, and you lie, and you swallow back the blood and bile until you get a chance to make your move.
“Let’s make a pact, okay? No matter what happens, you have my back, and I have yours.” He smiles at me and leans in, pressing a light kiss to my lips, like a promise for tomorrow. “Deal,” he says, and then, when I try to turn over, he moves his hand to my face and holds me there. Even though it’s pitch-black, I can see the reflection of the moon in his pale irises. “For all my faults, I never lie. I will have your back, Gidge, no matter what.”
I didn’t just sleep with four outlaws because I was a broken girl with too much pain. I slept with them because I was an old soul trapped in the body of a bird with clipped wings. I slept with them because there was something in each of them that I liked. That … if I let myself think too hard about it, that I loved.
The thing is, this pull between us is so strong, so irresistible, a dessert that I never should’ve sampled. He’s too old for me. He’s too wrong for me. He’s an asshole. And yet I want him in a way that I’ve never wanted anything else. Tainted me filthy, this bitch.
“I missed you so much,” Grainger grates out through gritted teeth as I dig my fingers into his rust-red hair and yank on one of his lip rings with my teeth. “I hate you so much.”
it’s Crown. Crown. Fucking Crown. Born Calder Reid, ex-cop, Boy Scout among thieves, six foot five with auburn-highlighted brown hair that curls in such a sweet, endearing way that it almost tricks me. Almost.
“After Grainger brought you to the compound, you bummed a smoke from Sin, and that’s the last thing I can recall. Only the five of us know you traded us for that boy.”
“They’re bad thoughts, Gidge. Horrible ones. When I look at your scars, all I can think about is how they’d taste, how it might feel if I ran my tongue across them.”
Our eyes meet, that sacrilegious heat burning between us. Hellfire, that’s what it is. Grainger is a demon, and I am the devil’s daughter.
He doesn’t look at me the way he looks at everyone else, that is, like prey. He looks at me like one grizzly to another. Just two predators passing in the night.
We sin together in the shadows of the woods, my head thrown back in demonic bliss, my bare heels digging into the dirt. The term eating out seems to fit this scenario: I’m being consumed. Grainger possesses me with his mouth, and then he drags my soul out, kicking and screaming onto that sinful tongue of his.
“Be my armor, Crown,” I whisper, the alcohol convincing me to be even bolder than I normally would. “I want to wear you like a shield, carry you into battle with me.” I suck on his lower lip, and he closes his eyes, his hands finding my hips and squeezing so hard that I let out a small sound. “That’s what I want out of all this. You. Them. The four of you—my dark knights instead of Cat’s. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
Falling in love may well be the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done.
Cinnamon and blood mandarin, touched with a hint of tobacco and cloves.
Sin
Ruination. We were both built for it. Guess we get to ruin each other.
The man has always—I kid you not—smelled like old books and bergamot nectar. That’s how his jacket smells, too, like a library full of yellowing pages and leather covers, of fresh ink and ancient words.
Beast
“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call,”
“You can talk to him out back, but only after Beast gets back.” Grainger releases me slightly and leans down to give me a look. “We have a little agreement of our own, one besides sharing that pretty pussy of yours.” My brow goes up and he smirks. “If Gaz touches you, we get to kill him together.”
“Don’t hurt me,” I whisper, before I can stop myself. The words are a bit too raw, a bit too vulnerable for my liking. That seems to give Grainger pause, but only for a split-second. “Why protect you with my life then cause you pain? Don’t be stupid, Gidge.”
Several of the wives glance my way with confused expressions, and a few even smirk and exchange looks. “Yeah, I’m fucking the road captain, too. My husband knows.” I start walking down the hall toward the front entrance, pausing once more before I head back outside. “The VP and the sergeant-at-arms are also mine. Spread the word around so all the girls know. So help me, if one of the club-whores even approaches one of those four, it’ll be trouble.”
I will never be the sort of girl who loves only one man. There’s too much of me. I’m too volatile. I’m a white-hot star in a distant galaxy, and I need people in my orbit.
There’s Sin, standing beside me, letting me do something that’s doubly sacrilegious in our culture. He is a dirty heretic in this moment. But even among heretics, I stand out.
He says we can’t end this story with a happily ever after. Who says we have to? My life will never be a fairy tale, regardless of how the rest of it turns out. My sisters are dead. My father is a monster. My brother is a creature from a nightmare. Even the men I love have hands drenched with blood, hearts of smoke and shadows, pasts dipped in pain and loss. They are not whole. Neither am I. But I don’t need that. I need someone with jagged edges, someone who can handle all my sharp points, my biting acidity, my nihilistic tendencies. Multiple someones, preferably.
Marriage is fucking stupid; it’s paper. I want a commitment made up of blood and lies and truths and fucking and feeling and passion and loyalty.
